Opinion Makers

Politiae has an interesting post up today that he/she (damn androgynous handles) is planning on following up soon:

The survey was among the first to reveal what many of us take for granted now (or what some of use are just beginning to realize, a little behind the curve)--that those who can afford the luxury of spending free time and money on surfing the Web (and in particular visiting blogs daily) are highly involved already. Indeed, they are not really the sort who need to be persuaded to vote, and they are especially not the sort who can be persuaded to vote for a particular candidate.

This is all leading up to a post about why I don't think the Internet can be used to persuade undecided voters, which you'll find in a few days, for those of you who care to come back.

I'm not sure I agree with his/her ultimate claim, but I'm going to wait to see the argument before I simply dismiss it out of hand. In the meantime, I think the description of web users in this post raises an interesting point that falls somewhat outside of the reinforcement/persuasion dichotomy: while most of the visitiors to a campaign's website are highly likely to vote regardless of the messages they receive through the site, they are also likely to be opinion makers and are a great target to court.

The degree of influence these opinion makers have can certainly vary strongly; many will simply be the "political guy" in their family or group of friends, but they can definitely make a difference. I'm sure many of us would be considered the opinion makers in our group of friends back home, and oftentimes we talk with people who know nothing about a given issue or candidate and our friends listen to us. Some may influence a handful of people; some many more.

I guess my point is that regardless of the persuasion side, the already-supporters who visit a candidate website just might be the best supporters a campaign will have. That's why I think putting talking points or other packages on-line for visitors to use when they talk to their friends, or even just having "e-mail this page to a friend" links easily available are so valuable. If someone wants to spread the word for you, it certainly makes sense to make it as easy as possible for her to do so.